by Bourne, Sam
To Kill a Man
Also By
Also by Sam Bourne
The Righteous Men
The Last Testament
The Final Reckoning
The Chosen One
Pantheon
To Kill the President
To Kill the Truth
As Jonathan Freedland
Bring Home the Revolution
Jacob’s Gift
The 3rd Woman
Title
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2020 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © 2020 Jonathan Freedland
The moral right of Jonathan Freedland to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
HB ISBN 978 1 78747 495 6
TPB ISBN 978 1 78747 497 0
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78747 494 9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places and events are
either the product of the author’s imagination
or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Ebook by CC Book Production
Cover design © 2020 Andrew Smith
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
Dedication
For Sarah – the woman in my life
Contents
To Kill a Man
Also By
Title
Copyright
Dedication
MONDAY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
TUESDAY
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
WEDNESDAY
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
THURSDAY
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
FRIDAY
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
SATURDAY
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
MONDAY
Chapter 48
Acknowledgements
MONDAY
Chapter 1
Washington, DC
Later she would tell the police she knew it was a man. She would say the sound of a footstep just before midnight, the heaviness of its tread, left her in no doubt that a man was inside her home.
She would tell them she had been at her desk most of the evening, working away on a document. She would explain that it was ‘a closing memorandum for the committee’, adding in her formal statement the official name of both the case and the committee. Not that it was necessary. The detectives knew who she was. She had served as lead counsel to the House intelligence committee during those televised hearings that had riveted the nation, conducting the most dramatic cross-examinations, briefing the media on camera just afterwards and building a cult following in the process. In Washington, and on cable TV, Natasha Winthrop had become a semi-celebrity. There was talk of a run for high office, even the very highest.
She also told the police what was less well-known: that while she had become a hero to those who despised the current president, she had simultaneously aroused a matching level of passion among those who loved him. She showed the detectives some of the tweets that had come her way, including a couple that had arrived earlier that day: Choke, bitch was one, Hey whore why aren’t you dead yet was another.
She told the police she was used to noises in the night. They were the proof that it wasn’t just real-estate hype: her home in Georgetown really was a colonial-era house, one that creaked and groaned with memories. But this sound, together with the softer one that came after it, had left no room for doubt. The second noise seemed more cautious, anxious not to repeat the mistake of the first. It contained human deliberation, taking care to disguise itself, aware of its own implications – though she used different words when talking to the police. It was nearer too, no question about it. And obviously, unambiguously, it belonged to a man.
Her statement said it was only a few seconds later that a man was standing before her, framed in the doorway of her study on the ground floor. She told the detectives that he seemed to pause, as if making an assessment. He was dressed all in black: boots, dark jeans, close-fitting winter jacket. His face was covered by a ski mask, with only his eyes visible. She said that his eyes had stared at her and that she had stared back at him. It was probably no more than a second, but that meeting of their eyes felt interminable. He took a long look into her, as if searching for something.
She’d wanted to move, but could not. She was frozen, her arms and legs as much as her throat. And what was strangest was that in that second, he seemed frozen too. Paralyzed somehow. Two people staring at each other, facing the void.
But then the moment was over. In two swift strides, he marched into the room. Very deliberate steps, as if coming in to collect something. She told the police that, for a fleeting second, she’d wondered if this were a robbery. If he was there to steal one of her files. Or, more likely, her computer. Given her work, it would hardly have been shocking: there were plenty of people who’d have been glad to know what she knew.
In both her first, unofficial interview with a police officer and in her signed statement, she mentioned that she had prepared for this eventuality. After the break-in at the firm, she’d had a panic button installed, linked to a private security company. There were two: one by the bed, one in the kitchen. But none in her study. Which meant she’d have to get past him and out of this room.
But before she’d had a chance to move, he was close enough to push her over. The flat palm of his hand on her left shoulder and she was down. And then he was on top of her
. She told the detectives that this seemed a practised movement, almost a technique. She thought at the time: he’s done this before.
Then he tore at her clothes. One hand stayed on her shoulder, the other began to tug at her belt and at her zip. She was writhing, but it was no good. The strength of him was too much.
She described how he used his knees to keep her pinned down, one of them pressing so hard into her hip she thought it would crack. He was so close, she could smell him. The damp of outside was on his clothes, that wet-dog smell of wool soaked in the rain.
In her statement, she described how he kept the ski mask on throughout, so she had only his eyes to go on. Her impression was that he was neither young nor old, but somewhere in between. Perhaps a few years older than her. Say thirty-eight or thirty-nine. She thought she saw, perhaps when the mask slipped, that his hair was dark and that he had stubble on his cheeks.
Later she would do her best to describe what the police kept referring to as ‘the struggle’, though that seemed the wrong word. She remembered that her free hand, her right hand, rose several times to push at his face. Not to remove his mask but to hurt him. She remembered him flinching and her nails catching his neck. They scratched him, deep enough for her to feel the flesh break, a tearing sensation that surprised her.
‘That’s good,’ she heard him murmur. ‘I like that.’
She told the detectives that when she heard him say that, a surge of nausea had rolled through her.
She tried to abbreviate her account of what happened next, though the police pressed her for details. How he used his knees to keep her immobilized, how his fingers tugged and pulled at her jeans, how his breath was on her face. Where exactly he put his fingers. How many. What he did.
When she tried to explain how she responded, to give an account of her thought process, she stumbled. The best she could manage was to say that there was no thought, that thought was not the right word. That none of this happened in her head. That her body took the decision for her.
Wriggling to escape from him, she raised her back just enough to lift herself off the ground. (She told the detectives that she wondered if he had allowed her this move, because it meant her body was closer, and therefore more accessible, to him; that he might have taken it to imply some kind of acquiescence or even – heaven forbid – pleasure, as if she were arching her back to meet him. The thought appalled her. But it also struck her as useful.)
His breath was heavier and faster now, his focus on – and, yes, she accepted this was an odd word, but it was the one that came to mind – his invasion of her was total. He seemed to pay no attention to what her right arm was doing, within touching distance of the top of the desk. He did not notice that her fingers were clawing at it, desperately scratching at the surface.
Soon her fingers reached higher until they found the edge of her laptop. She knew that she was close.
Still locked in place by his superior strength, her hand finally found what it was looking for: the hard, cool metal texture of the heaviest object on the desk. No bigger than a fist, it was a small and not especially striking bust of Cicero. Her statement explained that it was a gift from a former boyfriend, bought from one of those kitsch souvenir shops on a work trip to Rome a year ago. (To Natasha: Behold, a great advocate of yesterday – for a great advocate of today.)
She did not hesitate, she did not plan. Instead, with no thought at all, she gripped the bust in her hand, making sure she was holding it tight, then slowly lowered it until her fist was directly level with his temple. He didn’t see. He was too focused on himself.
A pause for a fraction of a second as she retracted her hand, and then, like the release of a catapult, she let it fire back as hard as she could, smashing directly into the side of his head, the metal of the statue colliding with the bone of his skull.
The sound it made was loud, but it was quieter than the silence that followed. A sudden silence, after the noise of struggle and breath and writhing and pain, a silence that filled the room and the rest of the house.
His head fell forward straight away, his face landing on hers. She felt her skin turn moist, slick. She told the police that she initially assumed it was his blood.
Slowly, she let her fingers uncurl, so that the bust fell out of her hand. She tried to wriggle out, but he was still on her, a deadweight. Her face was getting wetter. She used her free hand to dab at her skin and when she looked at her fingers she saw that the wetness was clear, like warm water. She told the police that a memory returned of a murder case she had tried a few years earlier. She knew what this was: cerebrospinal fluid. Seconds earlier it had been cushioning this man’s brain inside his skull. Now it was all over her. According to her police statement, this was the moment she understood that the man was dead and that she had killed him.
She told the police that it had taken some effort to get his body off her, that the weight had seemed to get heavier, the flesh more inert. She’d had to use her arms, her knees, her core, until, at last, she’d felt the corpse roll off her, landing on its back. It was then that she noticed the damp patch on the bunched material of his pants and saw that he had been unable to contain himself.
In her written testimony, Natasha Winthrop testified that it was only then that she’d pulled off the ski mask and looked upon the man’s face. She did not add that it was only then that she truly understood what she had done.
Chapter 2
Washington, DC
‘Maggie, how the devil are you?’
‘I’m good, Senator. I’m good. How about you? You OK?’
‘You betcha, Maggie! You bet your life. Come on now. Take a seat. Right here. That’s it. Great. So let me take a good look at you. It’s been a while, right?’
Maggie Costello could feel her jaws and cheekbones taking up that most traditional of Washington formations: the rictus grin. She knew she ought to smile, that it was expected of her. Part of that obligation was presumed gratitude. Here she was, getting face time, a one-to-one, a breakfast-time meeting – albeit without breakfast – with the frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination, a man recognized across the world and widely loved in America (at least by those on her side of the political aisle). Seventy years old, having served for the best part of half a century in Washington, Senator Tom Harrison was a veritable legend. Of course she should be grateful: the man could well be the next President of the United States and he had asked to see her, not the other way around. That dynamic was so rare, she was meant to be savouring it, delighting in it. If Washington was a jungle, and by God it felt sweaty and foetid enough at times, this was that precious moment when the alpha gorilla dips his head in your direction. So yes, she certainly should be bloody smiling.
She kept that up while Harrison worked his magic. Without so much as a note in front of him, he was telling her the highlights of her résumé: the work she’d done as a former White House operative under both of the last presidents – serving one willingly, the other anything but. He ticked off each achievement, chiefly the disasters she had averted, not because he thought she might have forgotten what she’d been doing these last few years – though, let’s face it, there were men in this town who would indeed mansplain your own CV to you, given half a chance – but because he wanted her to know that he knew.
‘I gotta say, Maggie. You’re a heroine of mine. I mean that.’ He patted his heart and shook his head, as if overcome with the sincerity of his feelings. ‘I mean, what you did with the whole book-burning thing? Goddamn, that was something. And that’s even before we get to the way you exposed the president and the—’
‘Thank you, Senator.’
‘No! It’s we who should be thanking you. My God, what you did for the American people. For the world! It’s huge, Maggie. Huge. From the bottom of my heart.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But – and I hope this makes you happy – I don’t wa
nt to talk about all the fire-fighting, troubleshooting stuff you do, even though, don’t get me wrong, you do it so well. No one better in this town. No one. Bar none! And I’ve been around a while, Maggie, I don’t mind saying. Bar none, Maggie.’ He fixed her with his longest, most earnest look. In the end, it was she who had to look away.
‘But that’s not why I brought you here. I don’t need a firefighter on my team.’ And then, with that little chuckle in the voice as familiar to any American as the sound of their own doorbell, ‘I don’t plan on starting too many fires.’
‘OK.’
‘Well, not those kind of fires! You know what I mean, Maggie. Because,’ and on that last word his voice did a little sing-song, doing the work of a drumroll, ‘I remember what brought you to this town.’
‘Really?’ she said, fighting the urge to add, Because I don’t.
‘Oh yes, Maggie. I go back a long way. And I remember that you were hired by a certain occupant of the Oval Office as a foreign policy specialist, correct me if I’m wrong. Oh yes, you see,’ he was tapping his temple, ‘don’t believe what you read in the New York Times, all that “more senior than senator” bullshit. I still got the best memory in the business. And so I remember: you were brought into that administration because of what you’d done in the Middle East. Maggie Costello, peacemaker.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Not that long ago. Woman your age, nothing’s that long ago. What are you, thirty-three? Thirty-four? My staff are giving me evil looks. What? It’s illegal to mention a woman’s age now? Give me a break. Craig, get me a soda or something. Maggie, am I wrong?’
‘About my age or about Jerusalem?’
‘Jerusalem. That’s what you do, right? Diplomacy, mediation, background in NGOs, United Nations? That’s your thing.’
‘It was.’
‘Because, believe me, we are going to have some major crap to clear up if we get this crowd out. And I mean, C-R-A-P. The mess these people have made all over the world, with our friends, with our allies? You don’t need me to tell you. You read the news; you know. Jeez, Louise.’
